Vol. 3(10), pp. 266-268, October 2015
DOI: 10.14662/IJELC2015.082
Copy© right 2015
Author(s) retain the copyright of this article
ISSN: 2360-7831
http://www.academicresearchjournals.org/IJELC/Index.htm
International Journal of English
Literature and Culture
Review
A Study of the Usage of Proverbs as a Literary Device
in Salman Rushdie’s Selected novels
D.Devi
Research Scholar, Bharathiyar University, Coimbatore. E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 30 October 2015
Language is an artist’s tool. Salman Rushdie uses language to describe his character’s appearances,
actions, inner feelings and thoughts. It is appropriate to say firmly that style of writing determines the
genuineness and suitability of any literary works. It has also been perceived that effective employment
of language in writing determines the expertise of the writers. Salman Rushdie uses proverbs as a tool
to convey his intended meanings. The aim of the paper is to evaluate some famous proverbs used in
the selected literary texts.
Key words: Proverbs, writing, meanings, language, stylistics, Salman Rushdie
Cite This Article As: Devi D (2015). A Study of the Usage of Proverbs as a Literary Device in Salman
Rushdie‟s Selected novels. Inter. J. Eng. Lit. Cult. 3(10): 266-268
INTRODUCTION
Proverbs according to Akporobaro, F.B.O. (2008) is a
small adage usually in the form of a moral advice or truth
expressed in an aphoristic manner. He goes further to
describe it as a means by which ideas could be clearly
expressed and explained. Yisa, K.Y. (1998) pronounces
that proverb is a short repeated witty statement of
experience which is used to further a social end.
Longman Dictionary of contemporary English (2008)
outlines proverb as short well-known statement that
carries a truth. The renowned English linguist David
Crystal comments on the nature of the proverbs:
The effectiveness of a proverb lies largely in its
brevity and directness. The syntax is simple, the
images vivid, and thus easy to understand.
Memorability is aided through the use of
alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm. (1995:184)
Proverbs could be described as short, popular witty
sayings with words of advice or warning. Proverbs could
also be viewed as a source of inherent intelligent, code of
moral laws and philosophy of both life and social justice.
The paper attempts to identify proverbs in the selected
novels used by Salman Rushdie. Proverbs can be
identified on the semantic plane, although in this case
their manifestation is impossible to determine in objective
terms. The paper shows the multifaceted nature of
proverbs and how the proverbs are organized by the
author. The aim of the paper is to distribute proverbs by
Salman Rushdie in four of his novels viz. Haroun and the
Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Luka and the Fire
of Life and Joseph Anton: A Memoir.
Devi
The paper focuses exclusively on semantics conveyed
by proverbs and the functions which they perform. The
following list shows the proverbs selected for the present
study from the four of Rushdie‟s novels under analysis in
their recognized forms. The data in the parentheses
refers the novels in which the proverbs occur and the
relevant pages. The total number of proverbs used below
is thirty.
1. A barking dog never bites. (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p.
58)
2. A drowning man will catch at a straw. (The Moor’s Last
Sigh, p. 213)
3. A house divided against itself cannot stand. (The
Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 1, 34, 49)
4. A word to the wise is enough. (The Moor’s Last Sigh,
p.179)
5. Actions speak louder than words. (Haroun and the Sea
of Stories, p. 125)
6. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. (The Moor’s
Last Sigh, p. 113)
7. Beggars cannot be choosers. (The Moor’s Last Sigh,
p. 302)
8. Big/great oaks from little acorns grow. (The Moor’s
Last Sigh, p.68)
9. Blood is thicker than water. (The Moor’s Last Sighp.
249, 337)
10. Blood will have blood. (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 362)
11. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost. (The
Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 73, 419)
12. Divide and rule. (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 87)
13. Live and let live. (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 351)
14. Love conquers all. (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p.
123)
15. Money talks. (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 118;
The Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 150)
16. Once a thief, always a thief. (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p.
49)
17. Opposites attract. (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p.
125)
18. Patience is a virtue. (Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
p. 97)
19. The end justifies the means. (The Moor’s Last Sigh,
p. 28)
20. There are no birds in last year‟s nests. (The Moor’s
Last Sigh, p. 393)
21. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. (Haroun and
the Sea of Stories, p. 43, 84)
22. They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. (The
Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 322)
23. Tit-for-tat. (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 113)
24. Two is company, three is a crowd. (The Moor’s Last
Sigh, p. 289)
25. Two wrongs do not make a right. (The Moor’s Last
Sigh, p. 365),
26. You can‟t tell a book by its cover. (Haroun and the
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Sea of Stories, p. 114, 114)
27. Tell a lie about a man once and many people will not
believe you. Tell it a million times and it is the man
himself who will no longer be believed.(Joseph
Anton: A Memoir, p.112)
28. If you sit by the river for long enough, the body of
your enemy will float by. (Joseph Anton: A Memoir,
p.532)
29. Our lives teach us who we are. (Joseph Anton: A
Memoir, p.414)
30. Naught but love makes magic real. (Luka and the Fire
of Life, p.5)
The following novels have the greatest number of proverb
quotations:
The Moor’s Last Sigh (20) Haroun and the Sea of Stories
(6) Joseph Anton: A memoir (3) and Luka and the Fire of
Life (1). Formal and semantic modifications are very
common in proverb use and, what‟s more, it is claimed
that proverbs in the modern age exist primarily in their
modified forms (Mieder 1993: 58), which may be verified
in literary uses of proverbs as well. The figures quoted
above do show that in Rushdie‟s novels proverbs appear
in their modified forms more often than in their canonical
structures. Rushdie does not create anti-proverbs but he
attempts to invent quasi-proverbs that are forms
structurally similar to common proverbial representations.
For instance: “If people have no taste, the best things are
a waste” (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 52)
As they ran along corridors, up staircases, down
staircases, through galleries, into courtyards, out of
courtyards, along yet more corridors, Haroun puffed, „In
the first place, I wasn‟t “judging the book by the cover”, as
you suggested, because I could see all the Pages –and,
in the second place, this isn‟t the “real world”, not at all.‟
(Haroun and the Sea of Stories, p. 114)Here the
modifications may result in minor or considerable
semantic changes.
“Since proverbs have by default a generalizing function,
which is expressed in their surface structure by various
types of markers of universality” (Dobrovol‟skij and
Piirainen 2005: 61), In the example below , the marker of
universality of “Two wrongs do not make a right”– the
present simple tense – is replaced with the past tense.
“Violence was violence, murder was murder, two wrongs
did not make a right: these are truths of which I was fully
cognisant.” (The Moor’s Last Sigh, p. 365)
Micro function and Macro function are the two
classifications of proverbs. Example of macro functions of
proverbs in Rushdie‟s novels. Let‟s see the following two
examples: “A house divided against itself cannot stand”
and “Blood is thicker than water.” The first organizes the
first chapter of The Moor’s Last Sigh and additionally
serves as its title “A House Divided”. The proverb is
actually used in its complete form when uttered by
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Inter. J. Eng. Lit. Cult.
Epifania (The Moor’s Last Sigh,p. 99) to comment on the
fate of the Da Gama family and that of Abraham Zogoiby.
The proverb refers not only the story of a house divided
by the bitter disharmonies but even cruelty described in
the first chapter of the book which also functions as an
impending curse over the lives of the characters
throughout the whole novel.
Allegorically, the proverb can also be applied to India.
The protagonist of the novel, moves to the idea of
division within a nation which leads to the disintegration
of a tolerant society and the death of pluralism. So this
proverb is applied, on one level in the novel, to the
immediate circumstances of the families, but on another
level, to a more general idea permeating this and other
novels by Rushdie – the two functions are thus
interpretatively combined.
CONCLUSION
A detailed study of Rushdie‟s disposition of proverbs
shows a close relationship between the proverbs‟
standard use and their particular functions in the novels.
It means that Rushdie‟s distribution of proverbs in his
novels does not diverge from the standard, which can be
understood here as the sum total of the previous uses of
proverbs, resulting in the established clarifications of their
meaning and use. Stylistically speaking, the uses of
proverbs in Rushdie‟s novels do not suggest any
withdrawal from the standard, which shows that Rushdie
does indeed like using proverbs not only in their regular
forms but also with their familiar meanings.
REFERENCES
1. Akporobaro, F.B.O. Introduction to Poetry Lagos:
Princeton Publishing, 2008.
2. Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language: CUP, 1995.
3. Mieder, Wolfgang. Proverbs Are Never Out of Season.
New York: OUP,1993.
4. Rushdie, Salman, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, London:
Jonathan Cape, 2012.
5. Rushdie, Salman, Luka and the Fire of Life, London:
Jonathan Cape, Random House 2010.
6. Rushdie, Salman, Haroun and the Sea of Stories ,
London: Random House, 1995.
7. Rushdie, Salman, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Granta, 1990.